Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that wants to make sure everyone's drinking enough water right now

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.

Instant Band Night 34: NEW YEAR'S BALL III

Mark your calendar for the 8th of January and don't put away that fancy New Year's Even party outfit yet — take it out for one more spin in the company of the very best crowd in the San Francisco Bay area! Hit the stage and flex those creative muscles or just hang back and watch an explosion of musical inspiration roughly every 9 minutes; I guarantee you've never seen anything like it!

✨🪩✨
Jan 8 2026
6p
$10
East Bay Community Space
507 55th St 94609

(Eventbrite) (Facebook)

+ + T E L L + Y O U R + F R I E N D S + +
+ + S E E + Y O U + T H E R E + +

Surprising and Unique Ceramics For YOU

🪓🐰 A bunch of brand new little weirdos on sale NOW 🪓🐰

This will likely be the final drop for the year, and the savings are 🔥HOT🔥

If you haven't looked in a while, I urge you to take a gander now and see if there's anything in there that might make a quirky and unique gift for that friend who's otherwise impossible to shop for. Come 2026 there will be new little guys; I've already hit a rich vein of ideatic ore that longs to be mined.

Idea Factory Giveaway

I think it's probably safe to say the podcast is on hiatus after three+ years of inactivity, but I'm putting a link to its evergreen Apple Podcasts presence here, which includes a back catalog over 150 episodes long chock-full of excellent ridiculousness, including an experimental tabletop RPG and a couple of Star Trek fantasy drafts that could almost be their own show if I had the time to make yet another podcast

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.

The ongoing teachers' strike means there's just not a lot of time to put into these longer sections, but I want to offer a word of considered advice to anyone contemplating making a gingerbread Xmas cookie this season: put an orange glaze on it. This will involve zest and juice with the powdered sugar, and it will be equal parts unbelievably good and dangerous; good for the obvious reasons, dangerous because the subsequent temptation to eat all of your gingerbread in one glorious go will be substantial. I must spread the word but also temper it with warning. Go in peace, friends.

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.

The teachers are still on strike

The house is still standing

We hope for one of these things to change in the near future!!!

Recipe Nook

The three recipes I'm presenting to the kids for audition this week are:

• French onion baked lentils and farro

• Brussels sprout pasta

• Instant pot chili verde

I've managed to preliminarily consult Quentin and I think the Brussels sprout pasta might be the winner, although of course I'll be leaving the walnuts and pecans out (does anyone have suggestions on anything that might be good to sub in?). I do plan on resurfacing those other two some other time, though, because dang.

Fascination Corner

I read a lot of newsletters; here are some links that caught my eye.

• Antifungal resistance has been a growing problem for a while now and it's only going to get worse. (The Conversation)

• The Scientists have invented bio-derived cling film that works better than plastic and would be a fantastic replacement if it's reasonably biodegradable. (Futurity) (Paper)

• EDIBLE. SOFT. ROBOTS. This is not a drill!! (IEEE Spectrum) (Paper)

• The Scientists have spun up an instance of The Machine (Analytical Flavor) that can spot biologically-derived molecules in samples of ancient rocks, which will come in handy if we ever get our hands on rocks from, say, Mars. (Reuters) (Paper)

• We've talked about this before, but let's go a little more in-depth on how The Scientists are using drones to collect breath samples from whales and see how healthy they are! (CBC) (Paper)

• Jesus creeping Christ in the cornfield: there's no way we as a species need this many private satellite constellations. (Nature)

• A good way to make crops more drought-resistant might be to simply give them fewer stomata, but the actual genetic mods involved are tricky. (Knowable)

• If we discover alien life (or signals from an alien civilization, more likely), how are we going to announce it? The Scientists are revisiting the protocols right now. (Supercluster)

• "We are hardwired to sing − and it’s good for us, too" (The Conversation)

• I suppose one good and funny use of The Machine is to automate exploiting crypto fuckups! (Anthropic Red Team)

• A new experiment lends credence to the notion that our brains really do sync up when we work together with other people. (Science Alert) (Paper)

• Wood-en ci-ties! [clap! clap! clapclapclap!] Wood-en ci-ties! [clap! clap! clapclapclap!] (Nature)

• "Culture Wars Are For Cowards: And most people don't like bullies." (How Things Work)

• Hop water hasn't really taken off the way the rest of the nonalcoholic beverage industry has. Have these folks considered it's because hops taste bad? Just a thought. (Food Dive)

• The Machine (Generative Flavor) is disturbingly good at swaying the opinions of voters after a little chat, but of course you have to take into account the fact that it just makes shit up whenever it feels like, which just makes the whole exercise even more disturbing! (Nature)

• Grid-scale batteries are going crazy out there right now, which is an encouraging sign! (TechCrunch)

• The Scientists have created a new ultrablack fabric that's easy to make and isn't angle-dependent, which is fun. (Cornell)

• Is brain rot real? It sure seems like something's going on, but the actual causes are hard to zero in on. (NBC News)

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.

A band and their album

(I remembered a formula for making fake album covers that involves searching for a random appropriately licensed photo and then applying your best Graphic Design Skills to the result; let me know what you think this band/album sounds like, because your answers are always incredible)

New Music Roundup

Last week's band/album was:

No reader interpretations came in for this one, which I think is a first-time effort from a jazz trio (sax, bass, drums) fresh out of music school.

I still could use some more submissions to build out a notional Reader Submission Month for band/album/artwork combos! Feel free to send something in; just tell me how you want to be credited!

Thanks

If you've read this far, I thank you. Feel free to forward this to someone you like, or inflict upon someone you don't. If you received this as a forward and would like to subscribe yourself, you can do it at the bottom of this page right here (which also has the archive)!